(BEIRUT) — Syrian government airstrikes killed some 50 people in an opposition-held city this week in bombing that apparently sought to target a rebel commander, activists said Wednesday. The death toll was unusually high, even by the vicious standards of the country’s civil war, now in its fourth year. The killed included a mother and her five children, crushed under the rubble, a rebel commander and several fighters in the central city of Talbiseh, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The group, which obtains its information from a network of activists on the ground, said it counted 48 killed in two days of strikes on Monday and Tuesday. Similar information was reported by a local Talbiseh activist collective. Both groups said the death toll was likely to exceed 50 as residents were still pulling out bodies from the rubble. “Residents woke up from the massacre yesterday only to witness another terrifying massacre,” said the local collective in a Facebook update, describing Talbiseh as a “destroyed” city “filled with civilians and displaced who cannot find bread to eat, chased by the shelling of regime forces.” Videos uploaded of the aftermath showed a man weeping as he clutched his lifeless baby boy, and residents praying over the shroud-wrapped bodies of a mother and her five children.